The previous Evidence Net workshop was aimed at identifying the sorts of features that the second phase of the Evidence Net site might have. This workshop was very much aimed at prioritising the suggested features.

The workshop began with an activity to get some idea of people’s initial thoughts around some of the ideas that were to be discussed later in the day. People were asked to stand in a line with their position representing how strongly they felt about a topic. This sparked off a bit of discussion and the day then started in earnest.

The next activity was a short listing of the feature sets by each person. A summation of the votes was carried out and this was used to specify the prioritisation of the features. The top feature identified was functionality around adding resources to Evidence Net.

The workshop was split into groups to discuss how the addition of resources should take place. This included not only articles, case studies, papers, etc. but also things like events and collaborative networks. The groups came up with details about how things should work and some basic workflows and ideas for things the interface should offer to an Evidence Net user and an Evidence Net administrator. The workshop spent a good while discussing the options raised and how this would affect the usage of the site.

With time fast disappearing the afternoon kept the group set-up but with each group tackling just one of the next four or five priority sets. Each group presented their ideas and the whole group discussed each for a few minutes.

One factor that kept cropping up was that of having users login. As well as helping to identify and log who would be contributing what it just as importantly formed the basis of allowing the site to deliver customised content such as recommendations and news about updates.

Overall it was again a very lively workshop which I hope everyone got a positive experience from attending. I’m sure that the Evidence Net team came away with lots of useful views and ideas that will keep them busy analysing for weeks to come. The workshop is just one of several second stage activities that the Evidence Net team are carrying out and I would guess that the other activities are likely in the main to identify the same sorts of features.

These wide user base information gathering activities should help to ensure that the best possible range of input is obtained to develop the next phase of this resource and I’m looking forward to seeing what impact we’ve had on defining the feature set of Evidence Net phase 2 and from my personal perspective the technologies and solutions identified to deliver what is potentially quite a complex but rich set of requirements. It will almost certainly be a phased delivery but the final version will surely be an exceptional educational resource.

For the second time this week I’ve been out of the office and working in one of York’s many hotels. This time rather than a team away day I was at The Grange Hotel attending the first of a series of workshops on Evidence Net.

Evidence Net is a service that The Higher Education Academy is developing to support the process of using evidence based research to inform practice in the HE Sector.

The workshop was attended by a number of Academy staff with an aim to generate lots of ideas and to pull together a common understanding of the sorts of things the second phase of the Evidence Net web site should be looking to deliver. The morning was spent setting out some of the background and establishing a base of common understanding. From this a set of objectives for the work was outlined through some combining people’s individual thoughts of what the objectives should be and to a limited extent a start on what sort of measures could be used to measure the success of this.

After lunch, the approach turned to team discussions and sets of functional requirements were drawn together though “solution-mode” was purposefully avoided by an approach of focussing on what was needed rather than any technologies that could deliver it.

The day seemed to work well and I look forward to the opportunity for the ICT team to feed into the rest of this project.